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RUSSIAN ARTISTS REP THE NEW MEDIA SCENE AT THE VENICE BIENNALE

Over the years, we’ve spilled considerable ink over the lack of digital art at major contemporary art fairs and venues around the world. Looks like that won’t be the case at this year’s Venice Biennale, in part thanks to a group of Russian new media art organizations that are joining forces to exhibit 13 works covering the “effects of industrialization, urbanization, revolution, wars, construction and reconstruction.”

Curated by Silvia Burini and Matteo Bertelé, Capital of Nowhere is being held at Università Ca’ Foscariand features the work of artists from St. Petersburg-based Cyland, a cyber media arts lab, and CSAR (The Center for Studies on the Arts of Russia).

“In traditional societies, generations would come and go much faster than habitat would change,” note the folks from Cyland. “Catastrophes changed landscapes, be it natural or human in origin — from volcano eruption to migration to asteroid and cultivation. In contemporary times, variety is introduced quickly into landscapes by prosperity or adversity.”

Two of the more eye-popping and technologically-inspired works come from artists Anna Frants and Alexandra Dementieva.

Frants, one of the founders of Cyland, is exhibiting Cloud That Smelled Blue, a title that is as evocative as the work itself. This large-scale installation is an attempt to cross “boundaries between art, design and cinema” and while may not be groundbreaking in itself, Frants does succeed in gracefully weaving sound, video programming and robotics together into an immersive new media whole. 
 

In Cloud That Smelled Blue, a robot moves along a track, pulling sheets of reflective material atop a rectangular vein of projected light that resembles the sky. The effect is that of a futuristic fantasy. And that is Frants’ intent, as a lot of her other work aims for a similar synthesis of the fantastical and futuristic.

With Breathless, Alexandra Dementieva worked with Aleksey Grachev and Sergey Komaro to engineer and program an installation that looks a bit like a teleportation machine. Vertically-oriented rings of light move up and down. People can stand inside these three “light objects,” though the light patterns are fully automated. Two of the objects are connected to an RSS feed via computers, while the third provides wind, temperature and noise from the street via an anemometer (airspeed sensor). 

Alexandra Dementieva, Breathless

According to Dementieva, the computer searches the RSS feed for all words related to the concept of “fear” for one light object, and “desire” for the other. The greater the number of related words that are found, the brighter the objects’ LED lights grow from bottom to top. The person inside the third light object can blow on the anemometer, which then alters the pattern of the object’s illumination. “The simple act of breathing becomes visible and important,” notes Dementieva.

Pushnitsky, known for his skill in mixed media and provocation, offers up a hybrid painting-projection. In it, the artist juxtaposes a projected sunrise over painted archaic columns.

“Max/MSP was used on the technology end,” Pushnitsky told The Creators Project. “I worked with technicians off-site and on-site at the exhibit to create a digital video of a sunrise/sunset, which was then mapped to project onto and specifically juxtapose areas of the painting.”

Gubanova and Govorkov’s Flirtation of White Noise is a video and sound installation. Like Pushnitsky, the duo used Max/MSP, but supplemented that with sensors controlled by an Arduino. The video also involves stereo panorama. According to Gubanova and Govorkov, the physical action of the viewer triggers static (white noise) to form birds. If enough physical action is triggered, an entire flock of flying birds will appear. (The footage of the birds was shot on the island of Crete in Greece, while additional footage was shot in Rome.)

The exhibition runs until July 10 and also features work by Marina Koldoskaya, Peter Belyi, Alexander Terebenin, Petr Shvetsov, Ludmila Belova, and Kurvenschreiber Collective.

by DJ Pangburn

THE TIME KEEPER. A TRAVELING GROUP EXHIBITION

On June 7, The Time Keeper opened at the IMAL Center in Brussels — a traveling group exhibition touring through Brussels, St. Petersburg, Berlin, Istanbul, and Brooklyn, New York. The artists presenting their work were Alexandra Dementieva, Anna Frants, and Aernoudt Jacobs.

The project was supported by cultural and artistic institutions including VGC, Imal, and Adem in Brussels, and CYLAND MediaLab in both St. Petersburg and Berlin. The exhibition focused on the theme of Time, exploring its various dimensions — present, past, and future — from an artistic perspective and through the lens of contemporary societal perceptions.

The many expressions of Time also interact with human psycho-physical factors, mediated by the arts — whether visual, musical, or installation-based. The result is a comprehensive view of contemporary art’s take on the complexity of the temporal dimension, approached from various (creative) perspectives.

The artistic contributions from these three artists not only stimulate aesthetic responses, but also provoke personal reflection, since investigating Time is inherently an open act of exploration.

Shadows is an installation by Anna Frants, an internationally recognized artist and curator active between Russia and New York. Her works have been exhibited across Europe and the United States. This particular new project was developed at CYLAND MediaLab and premiered at this event. The tools used in this interactive piece include a projector, proximity sensors, speakers, and programming devices. Frants creates a multisensory, audio-visual environment that actively involves the viewer. The abstract idea of time becomes tangible, encouraging each spectator to develop a personal and intimate perception, ultimately showing that Time is undeniably a subjective dimension.

The projected videos are fragments of external realities, which the audience connects to through memory and visual associations, exploring temporal distances. The key elements in this work are interaction and synthetic environments.

Breathless is the work of Alexandra Dementieva, an artist whose research focuses on social psychology and perception within the context of multimedia art. Her installations often aim to reveal the complexity of human perception in relation both to the artwork and to the viewer.

This installation features three LED objects. Two of them — shaped like cylindrical spirals — are connected to an online RSS feed, while the third object, through an anemometer and sound sensors, captures air and sound input from the surrounding environment. A computer searches the web for two different words simultaneously, and the intensity of the light emitted by the objects increases according to their frequency on the Internet.

Up close, the viewer can interact by blowing onto the sensors, thereby giving the objects more “life.” Essentially, three elements determine the lighting: human presence (breath), external reality (ambient noise), and virtual elements (words).

Through this piece, not only are invisible objects given visual substance, but human and natural factors are also made measurable. The metaphor of light, furthermore, represents a conceptual link to reflections on visible/invisible, presence/absence, and virtual/real.

The third artist (and musician), Aernoudt Jacobs, is based in Brussels. His main focus lies in different modes of field recording, often in conjunction with experimental contexts. His installation for The Time Keeper, titled Glaz-Maton, is a sound-based work that utilizes musical box technology. It is fundamentally acoustic, with the box serving as a basic acoustic resonator — devoid of any electronic components.

What makes it compelling is the data recognition instrument (primarily detecting iris color, heart rate rhythm, and hand moisture) that is made available to the audience. Through this device, the principle of the music box is altered, allowing participants to intervene in an objective process — the recording of data. At the end of the process, a unique and personalized melody is created for each viewer, generated from their personal biometric data. Each cassette had been prepared to produce different sounds. The resulting sounds are audible outputs of invisible traits.

With a final overview of all three works, one could say that while Shadows presents a subjective idea of time, Breathless offers a more physical and conceptual interpretation. The third, Glaz-Maton, addresses the auditory aspects of temporality. These are three different approaches to the same profound and eternal dimension in which we are all immersed: Time.

by Silvia Bertolotti

Digicult July 31, 2012

AUCTION WEEK APPETIZERS: FRIEZE NEW YORK AND THE AGE OF KOONS

This week, contemporary art took hold of New York – and we’re not just referring to Jeff Koons‘ extra creepy cover of New York magazine, heralding “The Age of Koons.” “The most successful artist” did cause plenty of commotion, though, launching simultaneous shows at David Zwirner and Larry Gagosian. Earlier, there had been a rumor that one gallery would show new work, and one a collection of classics. As it happened, both showed new work, inspired by the classics. But that’s Classics with a big “C” – whether you take your Venus Callipygian, or of Willendorf. Then again, Koons wasn’t the only one copying famous sculptures that week. Outside the Frieze New York tent, Paul McCarthy erected an 80 foot tall, red balloon dog: Koons meets Clifford.

Paul McCarthy, Balloon Dog, 2013

In its sophomore year, Frieze Art Fair’s New York edition was commendably strapping, bringing in a solid show from the trendier edges of the blue chip realm (not as stodgy as Basel, not as dicey as NADA.) There were more stable shows than expected – recently, galleries seem to be fighting fair fatigue with solo presentation or thematic exhibitions, rather than just one work from each of the represented artists – but the fair still managed to feel fresh. At Marian Goodman, one entered a white room to find an eleven-year-old girl, an Ann Lee (the anime character famously “rescued” by Pierre Huyghe and Philippe Parreno) brought to life by Turner contender Tino Sehgal. She was unnervingly poised, asking annoying questions ala most eleven-year-old girls, except her questions were “Would you rather be too busy or not busy enough?” and “What is the relation between a sign and melancholia?” As part of the Frieze Projects, artist Liz Glynn set up a speakeasy, slipping keys to 144 fairgoers, purportedly at random. Recipients were instructed to find the secret door tucked between fair booths, where their keys opened safety deposit boxes. The contents of those boxes determined the cocktail that visitor would receive, and the story the bartender would tell as he mixed it. The stories were half-improvised, but the drinks were double-strength. There were no complaints.

Michele Abeles, You People, 2013, Image courtesy of 47 Canal

Frieze wasn’t the only fair in town, obviously. NADA was sporty fun, in its new location at Basketball City, one of the piers on the Lower East Side, in easy walking distance to Michele Abeles‘ “English for Secretaries” at 47 Canal, or Tracey Emin‘s ache-filled drawings at Lehmann Maupin‘s Chrystie Street outlet.

It also meant you were in close proximity to cutlog, the French fair/band of outcasts colonizing the Clemente on Suffolk. This year’s focus was on Russian artists and curators, including cyber-pioneer Anna Frants and Victoria Golembiovskaya, who installed a salon of drawings as part of her House of the Nobleman project. The grand prize for best artist was awarded to Siberian upstart, Radya, who constructed a version of Stability Figure #1 out in the courtyard of the Clemente. The sculpture erects a pyramid from police shields. Why it wasn’t called Stability Figure #2, we don’t know, but we do know it took home a $2000 prize, so our congratulations!

Radya, Stability Figure #1, New York, 2013

Baibakov Art Projects May 13, 2013